Tyrant is still a very, very problematic show, but I have to give credit where credit is due: “Preventative Medicine,” the show’s seventh episode, was not perfect (not by a long shot), but it was the most interesting that Tyrant has been in weeks.
Don’t get me wrong, though: the episode definitely gets off to a bad start. The main problem of “Preventative Medicine” is that it drops information in our laps that should have been made clearer weeks ago. Twice it seems like we’re coming into a storyline at the halfway point. For instance, did you know what Molly has been volunteering at the hospital for weeks? Cause I sure didn’t. Did you know that Molly has a sister named Angela? These things would have been nice to know, Tyrant. Oh, what about Katrina? You don’t know who Katrina is? She’s the gorgeous white woman inexplicably living in the Middle East, by herself, having an affair with Jamal.
I guess I should give most of the credit to director Marcos Siega, a veteran of The Following and Dexter (back when Dexter was good). He was able to keep things moving at a nice clip in the wake of Jamal’s attack on the Sheik. The Sheik is still alive, much to Jamal’s chagrin. Jamal asks Barry to ensure that the Sheik doesn’t wake up, and during this scene Jamal is lit very much like a villain, shrouded in shadows. It’s a good image. Naturally, Barry wants no part in this and tells Jamal he’s leaving Abbudin. Which we know he won’t do, otherwise there would be no show.
The first Big Plot Point is Barry’s mother telling him that it wasn’t his father who gassed the people at Ma’an…it was his uncle Tariq!
This should surprise absolutely no one except Barry, because Tariq is Tyrant‘s all-purpose villain. He was also responsible for the bombing of a barracks, which provoked the chemical attack. So Tariq is basically using Abbudin as his own sandbox, smashing his Starscream against his Bumblebee. Not only is this revelation predictable, but it’s kind of a cop-out, and ensures that Barry will now love and adore his late father. So long, ambiguity and conflicted paternal feelings, it was good while it lasted.
Barry, in a tailspin, goes to a mosque and talks to Fauzi. Tyrant really seems to be shoving this friendship down our throats, and it’s not working. You can’t have Fauzi constantly be a dick to Barry, then have him show up in Our Hero’s Lowest Hour to spout some platitudes about hope. For Christ’s sake, is there a more overused concept than hope? I don’t think it’s worked as a motivation since Milk or even The Shawshank Redemption, but screenwriters are never gonna stop going back to that well.
So Barry knows what he must do, and that’s go back to the hospital and kill Sheik Rashid. Wait, what?
It says a lot about Tyrant‘s ensemble that Adam Rayner’s best moment in weeks comes when he’s delivering a tearful monologue to a coma patient. He admits to the Sheik that it was Tariq who gassed Ma’a, and he laments that evil “makes you be evil in return.” Then he injects something that will kill the Sheik in a few hours. Afterwards, he gets sauced (telling the bartender to “just bring the bottle,” another overused cliche) and calls John Tucker, asking for the names of people who don’t think Jamal is up to the job of being president. “Jamal can’t run this country,” he says.
I guess my biggest problem with “Preventative Medicine” was its depiction of women. Molly just makes doe eyes at her husband, never criticizing, always steadfast, seeming to live through him rather than with him. Her sister Angela is the proverbial wild child, casually talking about having an affair with her boss and breaking up his marriage. Leila is becoming one-note and repetitive; Tyrant thinks it has a Lady Macbeth on its hands, but it really has a nagging, power-hungry shrew. And Jamal kills Katrina as soon as he’s tired of fucking her. So, sorry, ladies, that’s what Tyrant thinks of you.
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